I speak about David Mearns and Blue Water Recoveries, LTD on the home page, because David is working with me to make an expedition to find and document the wreck of Strong a reality.  David located the HMS Hood in 2000, wrote the book and filmed the documentary.  Captain Joseph Wellings, prior to his tenure on the Strong, worked with the British Royal Navy for 10 months between 1940-1941 as an attache of the American government.  During that time, he spent 5 weeks on Hood, training sailors for war time.  After Hood was sunk by the German ship Bismarck, he was on the HMS Rodney, one of the ships in pursuit and ultimately responsible for bringing down Bismarck.  David will be returning to the Hood site to retrieve the bell for the Royal Navy.  The following link explains all.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/07/29/hms-hood-bell-sea-paul-allen-bismarck-nazi-_n_1715950.html

Just briefly, the man in the article above is Paul Allen, co-founder of MICROSOFT!  So, if any of you have friends at Microsoft and you feel like mentioning to Mr. Allen, "Hey Paul, let me tell you about another historical connection to the Hood.  Ever heard of the USS Strong DD 467?", let's just say it wouldn't bother me one bit.  :o)

Enjoy reading the article and learning about the history of Hood.  This was just one more connection to Wellings, and to the history of the future captain of Strong.   I have David's book on Hood and Bismarck listed on the Navy Links & Research page.

Tammi

  Just to let you know, another STRONG family member has contacted me!

I mentioned this in an email previously, but a few weeks ago I had an a phone conversation with a man by the name of Francis Rieber, who served on board the USS CHEVALIER, also a member of DESRON 21 with STRONG. Mr. Rieber was on CHEVALIER during the engagement with STRONG, and survived when CHEVALIER was sunk in October of 1943. After some time home, he was assigned to the USS STEPHEN POTTER DD-538, and it seems many of the survivors of STRONG were assigned to POTTER! He became friends with Rocky Britton and Carl Ochs who were on STRONG. While we were talking, he gave me the name of a person in the POTTER Association to contact, as I was interested in finding out how many of the POTTER sailors were former STRONG men. I was also hoping to find more family members this way as well. This gentleman put an ad in the POTTER newsletter and through that, I was contacted by Chip Cline, the son of George Clifton Cline, Sr., F1c, of STRONG and POTTER. Chip was excited to tell his family about this effort and about the web site, and I'm excited to hear more about his father who passed in 2000.

So many people to thank along the way for dropping crumbs along the path to follow. It's such a pleasure to have more new people to add to the contact list, and who support what we're trying to accomplish!

If you have a photograph of your STRONG sailor in uniform, or from the time period that they served that you would care to share, I'd love to post it on the web site. Email it to me and I'll be happy to post it up.

Tammi

I'm in the process of transcribing the letters written by Captain Wellings, the letters he wrote home to his wife Dolly (Dorothea) that I copied when I visited the Naval War College.  I took photos, JPEG's of over 200 pages, so it may take a bit.   When I come to Gatlinburg in September, I plan to have them bound in a 3-ring binder so anyone wanting to read them can see them easily.  So you ask, if I have photos, then why not just print out those images?  I thought about it, but there are some problems.  First, the captain has a slanted and very flat style of writing that makes some words difficult to read.  On the Memories of STRONG page, there is a letter that he wrote to my Aunt Lillian, and you can see what I mean.  So a lot of the transcribing is spent in looking closely at the context of the sentence to determine what a particular word might be.  I've worked for doctors in the past, and if I could read their writing, I should be able to read his!  Also, some of the photos are not great.  I did the best I could at the time, but some are just slightly fuzzy or opaque.  I can read them on the computer, but to have that transfer to a printed page might be difficult.   I like things in binders, it's a quirk of mine that I like to organize things and have them at hand.  If people want to read his thoughts and learn about his time on the ship, this is the best way.

Also, I'm thrilled to be "meeting" on line some of Captain Welling's family.  So far I've added a two nephews, a neice and a great-nephew!  They are offering me personal anecdotes and family information, and coming on board to meet the rest of the STRONG family.  I'm very encouraged to have Tim, Cindy, Bob and Ben on board.  It's also exciting to see the hits on the web site increasing every day!  Do keep visiting, I'll try to post something new each week.  And again, if you want to post something here please let me know.  I'm happy to just copy and past anything you'd like to contribute to the blog.

-Tammi

I'm sorry to report the death of STRONG sailor Peter Karagines of Yorba Linda, California.  Pete lost his battle with cancer on July 7th.  
Sail on in peace, Pete. 
Here's the link to his obituary: http://sanfran.goarch.org/news/the-passing-of-mr.-peter-karagines/
To the Karagines family, I'm so sorry for your loss.

Tammi

  I thought it might be time to share a bit more of ship's lore by blogging excerpts from some of Wellings' letters. When I went to the Naval War College in April, I brought home 293 JPEG's of photos and documents, and wish I had the time to make copies of more letters and other documents. The captain's letters give some wonderful insight into daily events of ship life, the people they met in various ports, funny things that happened hanging out in port, movies they watched and even some blurbs about the actions of war. For instance, when they left Brooklyn in late December of 1942, they assumed they were headed to duty in South America, and mentally prepared for such duty. He was concerned about what his wife was thinking, and because their mail delivery was held up, he had no idea what her fears and concerns were.  There had been no time to alert their families that their mission had changed.  The guys on the ship didn't even get any mail from home until the end of February!  In his letter to wife Dolly dated March 1st, 1943, he writes:
“No, I had no information that we were going west until we arrived in Panama and I was ordered through the canal. The Atlantic destroyers returned north and we kept going. I was also sad as you could probably tell from my letters. However it had to happen sometime, and perhaps it was for the best. We have got to get on with this war and good destroyers are needed here in the Pacific.”
In our time of instant communication with texting, Skype, email and cell phones, it's hard to imagine waiting weeks to learn about changes in the destination of your loved one aboard a ship.  And how different could their destiny have been if they hadn't gotten those orders to proceed west through the canal? There are so many “what if's” in there, they could fill the back of a semi. He was not allowed to tell his men that their orders had been changed until they were well under way, on their way to the Pacific.
Over time, I'll share more of the Captain's thoughts and experiences as captain of “a snappy well trained organization.” I hope you enjoy learning more about STRONG and her crew.

-Tammi